January 15, 2001

Converting a classic

By Rick Kogan, Metromix

Sex, drugs, con men, bootlegged videos, lunatics, beggars, palm readers, preachers, $1 sunglasses and all sorts of other tawdry diversions and oddball characters:

All that was available on the block of 42nd Street that stretches west to 8th Avenue from Times Square in the heart of Manhattan.

Recent years have seen the street remade. It is now a spruced-up boulevard offering such tourist-friendly treats as Madame Tussaud's wax museum, a number of legitimate theaters, some of which carry corporate names (American Airlines, Ford), the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, a Starbucks, a dozen more restaurants, and--how cute!--a Hello Kitty store, with hundreds of stuffed animals for sale.

But look and listen hard enough and there are still strange sights and sounds on 42nd Street. In the final weeks of December and the first two weeks of January on the sixth floor of a building at 229 W. 42nd, for instance, you could have seen and heard a Nazi shouting with glee, "Vee are goink to clear zee Fuhrer's name."

He was not a real Nazi. He was an actor named Ron Orbach, and he was in the middle of rehearsals for the remaking of Mel Brooks' 1967 movie "The Producers" into a theatrical musical, which is scheduled to have its world premiere Feb. 1 at Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre.

This sort of movie-into-musical transformation is not without precedent. Such films as "Big," "Flashdance" and "The Lion King" have made the move with varying degrees of success.

But none of those films carries the cultural baggage of "The Producers," the story of down-at-the-heels theatrical producer Max Bialystock (played in the film by Zero Mostel), forced to romance lonely old ladies to finance his shows. When timid accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) reviews Max's books, the two hatch a scheme to sell 25,000 percent of a play that is certain to flop, thereby allowing them to flee with the excess cash. They believe they have found such a show in a musical play called "Springtime for Hitler," a celebratory piece written by a former Nazi.

Though the movie was criticized in some quarters as being "too Jewish" and too frenetic, it won Brooks an Academy Award for best original screenplay, became a huge hit and has over the years attained the level of cult favorite and the status as classic. In June, the American Film Institute rated the greatest film comedies of all time, ranking "The Producers" at 11th. Two other films of Brooks' placed in the top 20: 1973's "Blazing Saddles" (6) and 1974's "Young Frankenstein" (13), on a list capped by "Some Like It Hot."

To some the notion of remaking "The Producers" for the stage is a logical one.

"This is a real love letter to the theater," says Susan Stroman, who is the director and choreographer of the musical. "It's about show business, about our lives. The lines in 'The Producers' we've all heard for real. I always felt that this would work as a musical."

But all those involved in the project know that many fans consider what they are doing to be a travesty, akin to painting a mustache on the "Mona Lisa" or trying to turn "Long Day's Journey Into Night" into a sitcom.

"We've felt the shadow of the film from day one: 'My God, you've taken this perfectly classic movie and destroyed it. Where's Zero? Where's Gene Wilder?' " says Thomas Meehan, who is collaborating with Brooks on the book for the musical. "People suggest ideas for musicals all the time and most of them just don't, ahem, sing. This one is very strong. It's built around the theater."

Offending the movie's cultists is just one of the pressures shadowing this production. There are the reputations and careers of the talents involved and many millions of dollars invested by producers.

"It's a great story and I must say they've been very smart about how the show has been structured," says Nathan Lane, who is playing Bialystock. "About how much of the movie we're doing, about all the little changes.

"It's the greatest idea in the world and it's the most dangerous, because you're playing with something that's--it's not 'Gone With the Wind'--but it is a cult favorite. The people who love this movie can quote verbatim every line. You kind of have to pay tribute to that. There are certain things that people want to see. I don't think they want a lot of variation. There is a certain tone you have to live up to. You can certainly make it your own, but it is a weird hybrid."

No one feels the pressure more than Brooks. Though he is generally regarded as a comedic giant, he has not had a critical or box-office hit since his 1976 Hitchcock spoof "High Anxiety." He may be risking the most. The success or failure of the musical version of "The Producers" will likely provide one of the final sentences to his career.

He deals with that by employing his most effective weapon, humor. One day when he arrived late for a rehearsal, Brooks walked in and in front of the entire cast shouted, in mock outrage, "No, no, NO! You're ruining my masterpiece."

Brooks is 74 now and married to actress Anne Bancroft since 1964. His face is deeply creased by a lifetime spent laughing, first as a Catskills comic and then as part of a glittering writing team (along with Woody Allen and Neil Simon) that brought life to the TV programs "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour"; as the creator of "Get Smart"; as movie writer, director, producer and actor; as the 2000-Year-Old Man on a series of best-selling 1970s comedy albums and on a 1997 CD with pal Reiner.

Brooks, one assumes, has done everything there is to do in show business.

"Everything except be tall," he says. "That's the one thing I've never accomplished, being tall. But I'm looking forward to that."

Brooks and Meehan are sitting in Studio A, one of three sixth-floor spaces being used for rehearsals. The schedule is as follows: 10 a.m. Max's Office; 12 p.m. The Rooftop; 1:30 Lunch Break; 2:30 Old Lady Dance; 3 p.m. Full Company--"Along Came Bialy"; 6 p.m. End.

The Rooftop scene is one in which Bialystock and Bloom (played by Matthew Broderick) seal the deal to produce Franz Liebkind's play. To celebrate, the Nazi playwright (played by Orbach) forces the producers into a song-and-dance number called "Guten Tag Hip Hop."

It is going well. Occasionally one of the actors has to be fed a line by the two people following the script in thick black binders.

Brooks and Meehan sit in folding chairs, watching and whispering. They are the only gray-haired people among the 20 or so dancers, actors, musicians and production staff members in the room.

"Vee are goink to clear zee Fuhrer's name," shouts Orbach. "You like my play."

"We're going to put it on Broadway," says Lane.

The three actors are dressed casually. The mood is relaxed. After an hour or so of working on various parts of the scene, Stroman asks, "Can we try the whole thing?"

"The whole thing?" says Lane.

"Yes, please," says Stroman. "The whole thing."

The actors' shoulders slump.

"Who's the Nazi now?" shouts Orbach.

Brooks laughs out loud.

Later he says, "Many people over the years have talked to me about making the movie into a play. I never wanted to do it. This would not be happening if it wasn't for David Geffen," the record mogul and movie producer who, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, founded and runs the entertainment conglomerate DreamWorks.

"He is the most persuasive, smartest guy that ever lived. Even though he was too busy with DreamWorks to be involved hands-on, he convinced me that it would be a good thing for 'The Producers,' not a bad thing but a blessing. He convinced me that I could dig down deeper and write the music and lyrics myself."

And so he began, calling Meehan in 1998.

"Collaborating is like a little marriage," says Meehan, a former writer for The New Yorker who in 1977 made a stunning theatrical debut, winning a Tony Award for writing the book to "Annie." He has since written other Broadway shows and collaborated with Brooks on the films "To Be or Not to Be" and "Spaceballs."

"You have to be able to say no to each other, but with respect," he says. "A lot of my role has been to eliminate Mel's worst excesses. He has great taste, and then he doesn't. He kids me back and forth and we're laughing all the time. He's an incredible person, a true genius. You never know what's going to pop out of his mind."

What pops out on this afternoon is this: "Talk about genius! If there is a true genius, it's Tom. I could still write this as a play without Tom, but I need him desperately to tell me what should be taken from Peter to pay Paul. What lines have to go. What monologues should be arias. I don't know that. I have an idea but it's been so long. He's done it so well, he knows exactly what should be sung and when it should be sung."

The stage show contains many new songs by Brooks, a couple of new characters and a lot of alterations. Some things have been lost, perhaps most notably the character LSD. In the film LSD, brilliantly portrayed by Dick Shawn, was a flower-power-spouting, drug-addled actor signed to play the title role in "Springtime for Hitler."

"It was a wrenching thing, but the character was an anachronism," says Meehan. "He just wasn't right."

The loss of that character was "painful" for Brooks.

"But we had to lose a lot of lines that broke my heart," he says. "I understand that to many people the movie is a religious mantra. They can do it like reciting the Torah or the Koran. They know chapter and verse. I hope those people understand what sacrifices had to be made for the movie to metamorphose into a musical. Hopefully the trade-off will be a lot of brand new stuff that will be entertaining and sometimes thrilling."

Many of the thrills will be the work of Stroman, who has been involved with the show almost from the start, when Brooks approached her and her husband and frequent collaborator, director Michael Ockrent, in 1998.

"He asked to meet with us and there he was, knocking on our door, and then in Mel came, dancing down the hallway," says Stroman, whose 1992 debut on Broadway as the choreographer of "Crazy for You" breathed new life into dance-oriented shows, such as her later revivals of "Showboat" and "Chicago." "We were both big fans of his and the film, and strongly felt that this would make a musical."

They began working with Brooks and Meehan, but in early December 1999, the 53-year-old Ockrent died of acute leukemia. "It was tragic, devastating," said Brooks, who worried about Stroman's continued involvement. "I just didn't know if it would be nice to ask her to carry on."

But work was what Stroman needed, and she did it at a frenzied pace in 2000: directing a Broadway remounting of "The Music Man," picking up her third Tony for directing a show she co-wrote called "Contact"; holding a five-week workshop for a new musical written by Harry Connick Jr.; remounting at the Theater at Madison Square Garden a version of "A Christmas Carol" that was originally adapted and directed in previous seasons by her late husband; and starting rehearsals for "The Producers."

"I love to come to work," she says. "That is natural for anyone who loses a lover, a mate. I run to rehearsals, I run to be with the actors. And this show is so funny, there are constant smiles in the room, constant laughter. That is so nurturing to a soul, to a spirit. It is being home, alone in my apartment, that's hard."

During rehearsals, she is an animated and vocal presence.

"She sets the tone," says Lane. "She wants us to have fun. Look, rehearsals are like going into training for an athletic event. It's very, very hard work and not for the faint of heart. It's a tremendous undertaking, a new musical."

Most people think that Lane came aboard on the night of March 2, when he was guest host on "The Late Show With David Letterman." Brooks was one of the guests and during his segment he whipped a piece of paper out of his pants, slapped it down on the desk and said it was a contract for Lane to star in "The Producers." He demanded that the actor sign it on the spot.

"That's what I like about you," Lane said on the show. "The soft sell."

He did not sign the contract because it wasn't a real contract. But the deal was already in the works, seeding one day in 1998 when Lane was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and decided to take a swim in the hotel pool.

"I got excited seeing the pool empty," he says, smiling. "And then up from the water pop the heads of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks. That was the first day he ever mentioned my playing Bialystock."

Lane was always Brooks' first choice for the role. "If Nathan had said no, I think we'd still be looking for Mr. Right," Brooks says. "I don't think there is anybody at the moment living today who is more perfect."

Lane said yes, of course, and he finds nothing weird about the fact that he is once again stepping into Mostel's large footsteps, having played the role--created in 1962 by Mostel--in a 1996 Broadway remounting of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."

"It's just coincidence, I think," says Lane, whose increasing popularity in film and television has done little to alter his opinion that he is first and foremost a stage actor. "What's that thing Mike Nichols always said, 'I'm the bird, you're the ornithologist. You decide.' So, I'm the bird, I don't know. I'm nothing like Zero and yet I'm sort of in that tradition of people who have done a lot of stage comedy. I'm just sort of the logical person to do that role.

"In many ways this role and Leo Bloom belong to Zero and Gene. I think we're just borrowing them for a while and people will treat this as a new work."

Broderick is of similar mind.

"I love Gene Wilder's performance so much, know it so well," he says. "He was a huge influence on me anyway, all the movies he did. I studied them as a young actor. To be doing a part he did, it's hard for me to get his readings out of my head. I can't get them out of my head. I'm still trying to figure out how to do that because we have to make these roles our own as much as we can, but at the same time we want to tip our hats to Zero and Gene . . . and steal as much as we can."

Broderick was the last major piece of the "Producers" puzzle. One of the most versatile actors of his generation, he is best known for his film roles. But he has extensive theater experience, as well as a couple of Tonys. He caught Brooks' full attention, and got his second Tony last year, in the revival of the Broadway musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."

"I was delirious when I heard him," says Brooks. "He can sing! And his emotion and his intention are so clear when he sings."

"We were having a talk about making a movie," Broderick says. "After the meeting Mel took me through the lobby of this hotel and we sat near some elevators where he told me he wanted me to play Leo Bloom."

The next day, Broderick listened to the music and read the script.

"Whattaya say?" asked Brooks.

"Yeah, of course," said Broderick.

And so, there they were, one frigid Tuesday in Studio A, dancing with a Nazi.

"The beginning is fine but it seems a little rushed," says Lane. "We're going so fast it seems a little muddy."

"The goofier, the better it'll be," says Stroman.

The rehearsals began Dec. 6. A week or so later, things were going well.

"Everyone is so smart, so funny," says Stroman, whom everyone, from the stars to the guy fetching coffee, calls "Stro." "I come in with a plan. There was a lot of homework done with all the designers and myself in making sure that everything flowed, made sense, that we were all on the same page. But I ultimately feed off the actors. If they have an instinct to go somewhere, I certainly let them follow it.

"There is a fearless quality to Nathan and Matt, to the whole cast. They will try anything, put themselves out on a limb to see if a particular moment will work. It stimulates my brain to work with people who are fearless. And I have this image: I am standing in the middle of a room and letting an actor run and jump into my arms and I will catch him. I want to make that environment happen during rehearsal, let them know that I'll catch them if they fall."

They will be at it every day until opening, moving from 42nd Street to the stage of the Cadillac Palace Theatre in the next few days. Traditionally, Broadway-bound shows open in small cities where they are less likely to draw a lot of attention as they try to work out any final kinks. The reason Chicago was chosen has more than a bit to do with economics, since one of the show's producers, the SXF Theatrical Group, runs the Cadillac Palace.

"But I'm pleased that it's Chicago," says Brooks. "After New York, Chicago was the best city for the film. It played there for a long time. It's a bright crowd, a sophisticated crowd, a hip crowd. But who opens a show in Chicago in February?"

The show is scheduled to run through Feb. 25 here, then make its Broadway debut April 19 at the St. James Theatre. The Chicago run is virtually sold out.

"I'm very curious to see what happens," says Lane. "Not since I was in (the 1992 Broadway revival of) 'Guys and Dolls' (as Nathan Detroit) have I seen so much excitement surrounding a show. It is like this is the revival of an old musical. People just want to see it again. I think they like the casting of myself and Matthew and I think they are curious to hear Mel's new songs. And it's so wonderfully politically incorrect. But there's also a sense of, 'You better come up with something good.' "

What audiences here will see is a product that is, Brooks said in New York, "90 percent there. But Chicago is it. We're gonna find out. We need live audiences to tell us where it's good and where it stinks."

Stroman calls the audience "the last part of the process, the final element. It is a miracle that a musical happens because it is a collaboration between so many different partners."

The rehearsal day is winding down. One more big number to go, and Broderick sips a cup of coffee and says, "I just love it. Rehearsal is my favorite part. There's no pressure to impress strangers. You're doing it for each other. It's the time when everybody is making new friends, establishing relationships. I love it all, the coffee, the hanging around in the hall."

Brooks sits in a chair, his hand resting on his chin, and says, "You don't need a lot of love to make a movie, you don't need a lot of emotion. You just need smartness and talent. But the theater is different. Without passion and love, there is no show."

Some two dozen men and women, all of them wearing white skirts, are dancing. They are pretending to be the many old women who have fallen prey to Bialystock's charms. Bent over, they are using metal walkers to move, but as the music starts they begin to sing and their bodies become lithe and agile. The metal walkers spin through the air. Even on the rehearsal stage, the piece looks magical.

It's dark outside and behind the dancers, through a wall of windows that face east, one can see the lights of 42nd Street, of Times Square and Broadway. It used to be called "The Great White Way." Now it's a neon shower of colors.